The idea of a nuit blanche (translated as “white night” or “sleepless night”) is an art event/tradition first seen in St. Petersburg, Russia and Berlin, Germany in the mid 1990s and first named “nuit blanche” in Paris in 2002. Since that time, the idea of the nuit blanche has expanded dramatically becoming a popular art event in cities throughout the world.

Today, a Nuit Blanche event consists of art installations and events in public spaces and museums, art galleries, and other cultural institutions opening their doors free of charge to the public from dusk till dawn. In effect, the host city itself is turned into a de facto art gallery, providing space for art installations, performances (music, film, dance, performance art), social gatherings, and other activities.

Besides St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris, nuit blanche events have taken place in Toronto, New York City, Tel Aviv, Santa Monica, and Montreal.

Northern Spark 2011

Spearheaded by Northern Lights.mn, Northern Spark is the first ever nuit blanche event in the Midwest. Northern Lights.mn is a roving, collaborative, interactive media-oriented, arts agency from the Twin Cities but for the world. It presents innovative art in the public sphere, both physical and virtual, focusing on artists creatively using technology, both old and new, to engender new relations between audiences and artwork and more broadly between people and their built environments.

Northern Spark will take place from June 4 (sundown ~8:55 p.m.) to June 5, 2011 (sunrise ~5:28 a.m.) at various locations along the Mississippi River and surrounding areas in Minneapolis and St. Paul. More than 60 artists from Minnesota, the surrounding area, and select locations across the country will be represented at the event.

MINNEAPOLIS, May 3, 2011 – It’s no secret Minneapolis St Paul is one of the leading centers of art in the United States. But on June 4 this year, the Twin Cities will join for the first time, the worldwide Nuit Blanche arts movement by hosting “Northern Spark,” the area’s first ever, all-night long arts festival.

For one night only, more than 60 regional and national artists together with the Twin Cities’ arts community will display new art installations at public places and unexpected locations throughout the city. Directed and produced by Northern Lights.mn and funded by the MN State Arts Board, Northern Spark takes place this summer from sunset on June 4 (8:55 p.m.) until the morning of June 5, 2011 (sunrise 5:28 a.m.).

“The Twin Cities has an amazing art culture and reputation,” says Northern Lights director, Steve Dietz. “Our aim is to really showcase that artistic excellence in a way never quite seen before by transforming the cities’ urban landscapes into a Twin Cites-wide art gallery for one special night.” The Northern Spark event will include a wide diversity of art forms and projects including multi-story projections, audio environments with vistas, installations traveling down the Mississippi on barges, houseboats and paddleboats, headphone concerts, and the use of everything from bioluminescent algae and sewer pipes for organs to more traditional media such as banjos and puppets.

One of the most highly anticipated installations is Jim Campbell’s “Scattered Light” from New York’s Madison Square Park, in which LED light bulbs suspended in a cube-shape on high tensile wire blink on and off to recreate the forms of pedestrians’ movements in three dimensions. Other artists involved in the nuit blanche include Christopher Baker, Phillip Blackburn, Body Cartography, Bart Buch, Barbara Claussen, Wing Young Huie, Debora Miller, Minneapolis Art on Wheels, Ali Momeni, Janaki Ranpura, Red76, Rigo 23, Jenny Schmid, Andréa Stanislav, Piotr Szyhalski, Diane Willow, Roman Verostko, Liu Xuguang, Marcus Young, and others.

The event is a collaboration — rarely seen on this kind of scale — of more than 40 partners each of which will sponsor one or more projects for the duration of the night. The goal is to showcase the urban splendor of the Twin Cities in a unique way, introducing a broad and diverse audience to innovative local and national talent in an inspiring journey through the night.